Well, one week ago we departed Messiah College and began our long flight to Thailand. We have been so busy from that day on. Today we all met for breakfast at 7 am. Today's breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, sliced large hot dogs in a sweet and sour barbecue sauce, corn on the cob, cereal and toast. It was not a traditional American breakfast but it was good. The students really enjoyed the corn on the cob. Following breakfast the students participated in the morning ceremony. Today Erica shared her experience in the L&D with the Thai students. The students were a little nervous this morning as it was the first day that they were working on a unit taking direct care of Thai patients. Four students will be on the Trauma Ward and five students will be on the Female Surgical Ward. I am sure they will be coming back with some "good" stories.

. The menu consisted of mushroom soup, fruit, spaghetti with a Thai sauce (peas, green beans, onion, herbs in a watery tomato liquid base). Following lunch we went to visit the Ban Samanjai Foundation (The Healing Family). They remembered us from 2009. This foundation was started by a parent who had a son with a mental disability. He wanted his son to have a purpose in life and to be a productive member of society. This father did his research and found a Japanese company that trained the disabled how to weave. His son became trained and through word of mouth other parents with disabled children became interested. There is a Japanese man who visits every year and donated everything they need to make this foundation work except for money. The foundation therefore sells their weaved products to support the foundation. This was a wonderful experience. The students joined the students in singing songs and dancing to "Mr Postman" and a popular Thai song. We treated the "artists" and staff to ice cream. The creativity that these individuals displayed was unbelievable. Students made many purchases today.

We returned to BCNC by 4 pm which allowed the students to have some down time prior to dinner at 6 pm. Tonight the menu consisted of white rice, a green leafy vegetable stir fry and a dish of squid. The fruit tray consisted of guava, mango, and rose apple, You should have seen the faces of the students when they found out that one of the main dishes included squid. Most of the students at least tried it. The flavor was not bad if you could just get past its look and texture.

Following dinner we met for class. This is the first break in the schedule that we had to regroup, debrief and discuss course work. The students were very eager to have our session tonight as we had a lot to discuss and process

. We did not address the delegation and management content of the class because students really needed to debrief. Everyone needed to vent about the public health care. Thailand has social medicine. Students are beginning to see some of the logistics of this kind of health care. Students have taken so many things for granted in the American health care system so the biggest difficulty they are having now has to do with the limited resources. Everything is reused, including gloves. They have many questions re: nosocomial infections and infection control statistics. We spent the evening comparing and contrasting differences in health care delivery, procedures, and the nurse's role. We talked for over 2 hours. It is very interesting to see the different reactions amongst the students. The same scenario created multiple reactions amongst the students. I am so glad that we had the opportunity to process this information. I have 2 pages of "rich" anecdotals. Now to figure out what to do with it.

Before we adjourned for the evening, we had to plan our activities for Thursday afternoon's "Welcome Day". The Thai students will be performing Thai dance, songs and games. We need to reciprocate with American performances. So, the students decided to demonstrate and teach the Electric Slide, Row Row Your Boat (in rounds) and Itsy Bitsy Spider (with motions) and a "Slapping" hand game. They will be on their own this day as I need to be preparing the evening's American dinner

The internet is really acting up this year. We have been having eve/nighttime rain with storms in the surrounding mountains. I believe this is what is interfering with the internet. So, please be patient with blog submissions and email responses. I never know when I will have internet connection. Also, I must apologize. I am trying to keep my blog updated on a daily basis. This has been difficult d/t a lack of time and physical exhaustion. I find that it can take me hours to complete an entry because I keep falling asleep as I write. I keep pushing myself to write because my short term memory is failing me and I want to give you as much detail as possible. So, if my writing, grammar, spelling is not stellar, bare with me,